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"Are we a family or a business?" History and disjuncture
in the urban American street gang
After 1987, in pool halls and city parks, high school football gam
storefront churches, youth centers, and other sites where police prese
was minimal, high-ranking leaders from Chicago's largest Africa
American street gang "Nations" began meeting to discuss the lat
period of change in their respective associations. Adorned in jew
and expensive designer clothes, and transported in luxury cars,
leaders left little doubt that underground commerce was at the h
of the gang's activities. In between discussions of collective exigenc
most of which centered around management of their crack-coca
trade, members "signified" with stories of failed or successful mo
laundering, new opportunities for investment, or a recent commo
purchase. Crack cocaine had arrived in the city and, with it, lucra
profits for a twenty- and thirty-something class of young black
living in the poorest neighborhoods. The involvement of gang mem
in the burgeoning underground trade was by no means ubiquitous:
all of Chicago's neighborhood gangs were entrepreneurial, nor did
members of the successfully commercial groups earn revenue th
could support conspicuous consumption - in fact, the majority ear
slightly above minimum wage.1 However, such activity was with
precedent: organized entrepreneurship was an atypical venture f
many of these thirty-year old gang families.
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These changes were not restricted to the gang, but were reflective of
shifts in the social and economic order of American society in the
1980s. Although the gang was "socially isolated" from certain social
institutions,4 the gang and its evolving corporatist mien could not be
entirely divorced from a number of critical social developments taking
place in the Reagan era. The Black Kings had seized upon corporate
ideology at the dusk of the "Fordist climacteric." 5 Their members were
following their consumptive urges precisely at the time in which free
market ideology and the romance of the "bootstrap" mentality had
produced a new phenomenal form of late capitalism, namely the indi-
vidual yuppie who consumed with conspicuous and ferocious intent.
The gang's own increasingly lukewarm and erratic embrace of their
political lineage - that of youth mobilized for grassroots concerns - in
favor of material gain was a sign of the times, what Adolph Reed
perceptively called the "triumph of the commodity form over insurgent
black politics." It is the objective of this essay to reconstruct briefly the
trajectory of the revanchist gang and the reconfiguration of Chicago's
"gangland" and, in so doing, to recast the contemporary street gang
and its position in the American social order.
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gathered during this period provides the bulk of the data presented
below and most of the observation occurred in the concentrated poverty
and working-class neighborhoods in Chicago's SouthSide as part of
another research project.'1 The approach departs from orthodox social
scientific methods because we introduce data that are not common-
place, and may be unprecedented, in the study of street gangs: namely,
the financial records maintained by the gang itself. An ex-gang mem-
ber who thought that two academics might be interested in "how the
gang works on the inside" provided for us the "books" of one Black
Kings street gang set - an account of the gang's underground activities
(specifically narcotics and extortion) over a period of four years.
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432
At the root of most narratives of recent street gang changes lies the
observation that gang members' relationship to mainstream institu-
tions changed significantly. Their shifting work experiences in both
legitimate and underground labor markets have been well-documented
by the so-called "underclass school" of gang research. These scholars
ground the corporate turn of the gang in the restructuring of American
economies, a process that offered little for urban minority youth and
young adults apart from poorly paying, "dead-end" jobs in the service
sector. De-industrialization created cities of "truly disadvantaged"
populations and, in so doing, closed off an avenue of exit - the blue
collar industrial and manufacturing sector - through which youth had
departed from the gang and (re)entered the societal mainstream.13 This
argument is confirmed by the life histories of senior Black Kings
members whose formative period of gang involvement occurred well
before the onset of the crack-trade in the mid-1980s. This cohort
tended to work in the industrial labor force or aspired to a mobility
path grounded in small-business ownership, a skilled trade, or blue-
collar factory labor. However, for members whose socialization into
the Black Kings occurred later, the field of opportunities had changed.
Their work experience reveals short stints - typically, several months -
in unskilled positions, including food preparer, office cleaner, and day
laborer. They shared with their elder counterparts a tenuous relation-
ship to educational institutions, most dropping out of high school,
but they differed because of their inability to locate income outside
of menial service-sector work during their youth. This shift in gang
members' relationship to the labor market in the 1980s certainly does
not account for the organization's overall corporate turn, but it is a
necessary backdrop because the gang's metamorphosis into a commer-
cial outfit partially satisfied the income needs of an unemployed and
alienated youth and young adult population.
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constituents, for the predicament of urban minority youth and for the
use of state intervention to remedy inner-city inequities.17
By the start of the 1970s, the urban-based law and order movement
had manifested in the large-scale incarceration of minority youth18 -
some were documented gang members, but other youth were involved
in progressive causes such as Black Panther Party activities or black
nationalist movements. This influx created administrative nightmares
for prison officials responsible for maintaining social order in prison
and gang affiliations became a convenient means by which they could
carry out their duties. The gang was allowed to continue operating and
members retained their connection to their ghetto neighborhoods; in
turn, prison officials successfully used gang divisions to control inmates
and deter unified mass protest. As gang leaders worked intimately with
prison guards, wardens, and other security personnel, a perverse quid
pro quo system emerged based on the constituent ties of enmity and
alliance among gang federations.19
The ties among members of the same gang "family" and among differ-
ent families were effectively strengthened by the end of the decade as
paroled members returned to ghetto streets and formed loose ties to
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436
When the leaders created this directorate, neither they nor the mem-
bership had a clear sense of how the local BK sets across the city would
interact with one another (and with their leaders). Indeed, the initiative
to create this structure appeared motivated by the wish to replicate
the support systems that the gang had served during their incarcera-
tion by enabling members to remain in contact with one another as
they left prison. However, leaders also wanted to secure their own
authority over the proliferation of Black Kings sets across Chicago
before another power base formed. The goal was not necessarily
to make the gang into a cohesive entrepreneurial organization and
activities of members remained social - either mundane or based in
inter-gang fighting. As Tim Tomlins, one of the founders of the Central
Leadership, stated,
"A lot of this was just about niggers in prison doing their thing. It ain't easy
in there, you got to have protection or you die. But, you know, when we was
leaving out [of prison], it was like we was alone, didn't know nobody. Some of
us needed to make our money, yeah, but that was just for folks like me, you
know, top dogs back then. Hell, most niggers just wanted to talk with each
other, see friends and shit. The [cross-neighborhood interaction] started
because we wanted folks to get together, spread the word that prison was
hard, man. You know, we needed to stay together with the shorties on the
streets. Teach them."
The diffuse sense of purpose among Tim Tomlins and other BK leaders
who created the Central Leadership is reflected in the leaders' lack
of precise information about the activities of BK sets in each of
the neighborhoods in and around Chicago in which they had a pres-
ence. It was an open question whether the establishment of a partly
imprisoned, partly freed leadership body would translate into a cohe-
sive organization that could direct activities over a large geographic
area, such as the city of Chicago. And, apart from continuing social
ties forged in penitentiaries and continuing to cast one's identity as
"BK," it was not clear exactly why this centralized managerial unit was
needed nor why the newly-freed leaders needed to bring groups together
across the city and Midwest.
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437
By the early 1980s, the Black Kings gang comprised two ideal-typical
members. In any neighborhood-based Black Kings faction, an older,
young adult segment might be present, many of whom had some history
of tenure in prison and involvement in serious crimes. As Michael, an
older member who was in his early twenties at the time, reflected,
"You had two kinds of niggers when I got out of prison: folks like me, we had
kids, you know we needed to eat. See it was all about drinking, maybe a little
stealing or selling dope, it was rough, so the gang was really something to
help us get by."
For this cohort, the gang was equally a base of social support and a
source of sporadic revenue generation. Peers might work together to
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438
sell narcotics and plan an auto theft or burglary operation. The gang as
a whole did not collectively organize such entrepreneurial activity.
Michael continued by describing the other membership segment
("shorties") as teenagers who engaged in petty delinquent activities
and for whom the gang was largely a social network.
"Other folks was really young, you know, shorties. They just hung out next
to us, but they was chasing girls. These niggers wasn't really crazy, lot of them
would leave, come back [in the gang], you know, it was just fun. Wasn't about
surviving [for them], like it was for us. They was like our baby brothers or
something, you know."
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439
Nearly all of the older BK leaders recall that the need to regulate the
economic activity of BK members arose once entrepreneurial activity
reached a wider segment of members. In the words of one leader,
"more niggers couldn't find no work, so they was humping [working
illegally] on the street [with other BKs]. That's when problems started
happening." This period was one of transition for the Black Kings
because the basis of the affiliation among members was shifting in
accordance with the emergence of a dichotomous member pool and a
two-tiered leadership structure. That is, before this time, the role of
the entrepreneurially-motivated member was not a source of tension
for the collective because of the rarity of commercial pursuits within
the gang. The basis for individual identity and, relatedly, the methods
for ensuring group cohesion remained rooted in various collectivist
ideologies that had formed in the Civil Rights era (In their thirty-year
existence, the Black Kings, and their counterparts in Chicago, the
Disciples, ViceLords, and El Rukn, have documented part of their
history orally and in written pamphlets - what members refer to as
their "lit"[erature].) An exemplary phrase that BK members recite, and
that is passed on to each generation, reads, "Black Kings brothers must
join as one to resist the oppression that faces all black youth. With this
oath you have found a new family, a brotherhood that will always be
with you...." The oldest and most commonly-used words that BKs use
to describe their relation to one another are "family," "brotherhood,"
and "nation." In other words, historically the Black Kings have under-
stood themselves via the principle of fictive-kinship in which the Black
Kings are a second family for black youth. This family is not necessarily
a substitute for the nuclear or extended household, but a collective
whose members are tied by personal bonds and shared circumstance.
Second, the gang is the collective embodiment of their own individual
alienation from broader social institutions and, therefore, is a politicized
collective. The politicization of identity is multi-valent and can mani-
fest at times in a vision of resistance against the state ("BKs must resist
the brutality of the police and the government"), a declaration of the
specificity of the black American condition as non-bourgeois qua non-
individualist ("BKs will survive only if they do not act alone and
understand that we are all for one, one for all...") and, a more amor-
phous sensibility that being black is effectively being a non-citizen
("BKs understand that America will never accept the black man...").
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440
"Lots of these cats, these independents was what we called them, they started
making cash, [their] heads got big, you know, they thought they ran the show
and shit. We [in the Central Leadership] had to slow them niggers down,
make sure they knew they was part of a family. Wasn't about doing your own
thing."
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of BK's don't even know this, but its still a violation [of group codes] to
make your money and don't help nobody else." Most "violations" were
incidents in which BK entrepreneurs who sold drugs refused to donate
part of their revenue to their respective BK set. This provoked anger
among the higher-ranking leaders because it eliminated a source from
which to extract dues, thereby reducing their own personal salary
augmentation. The most common punishment was physical abuse - a
beating at the hands of other members - coupled with monetary fines.
From 1982 until 1986, roughly the period of heightened street gang
entrepreneurial activity in Chicago before the arrival of crack cocaine,
an "independent" entrepreneurial BK class had created several internal
tensions. As one leader noted, the opportunity to earn illicit revenue
was proving attractive to large segments of the rank-and-file, and the
question for the leadership was not whether to continue along a com-
mercial path, but how best to move the BKs in that direction.
"There were just too many niggers making money. And, shit, I was in State-
ville [penitentiary] getting it on, so you know these niggers on the street was
getting it on too. No way you could stop it, so we just tried to deal with it.
But, I ain't gonna lie to you, man, it became all bout the money real quick,
ain't nobody give a damn no more about nothing else."
There was a divide among young adult members - the majority in their
twenties. One segment had demonstrated a clear interest in pursuing
street-based mercantilist opportunities; another was either indifferent
to underground economic activity, unable to find opportunities for
entering this sphere, or simply interested in the social aspects of gang
membership. Individual sets were beset by infighting as the two groups
of individuals fought for control at the local level. Some dissolved
entirely, given way to takeovers by rival gang families who then moved
into the neighborhood.
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442
These and other areas of discordance within the Black Kings Nation
would be exacerbated after 1986, when crack entered the Chicago
narcotics market and offered the ghetto dweller far greater opportunities
for illicit income generation. By that time, the BKs and other "super-
gangs" had a clearly reconstituted collective guise, namely a metropol-
itan-wide network of youth and young adults with sporadic interaction
and a makeshift two-tier hierarchical structure of authority and con-
trol that afforded a collective identity. However, by no means were
these supergangs consistently able to direct a commercial enterprise
nor were they even business-like in their approach. The introduction of
crack-cocaine, the processed or "cooked" version of powdered cocaine,
would be a significant turning point for their collective growth: some
supergang federations adjusted to the expanding market, using their
makeshift vertical-hierarchical organizational form to traffic narcotics
across widespread geographic areas, while others retained a territori-
ally-expansive skeletal network but remained ineffective as mercanti-
lists or as initiators of any other group activity for that matter. Aspects
of the BK's transition to corporatist activity are addressed below, but it
may be worthwhile to address the specificity of crack-cocaine traffick-
ing that helped to bring about the organizational realignment.
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Not all of the city's historic supergangs replicated the BK's path by
mobilizing their collective network and putting into place an apparatus
for adequate management of a drug trade. The factors determining
the eventual metamorphosis of any particular supergang into a com-
mercial outfit were complex. For example, the BKs and the Black
Disciples thrived because of strong centralized control based in prison.
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If the move away from familial and oligopolistic governance was driven
less by a well-thought out plan to instantiate corporate principles (of
competition, depersonalized authority, etc.) it was certainly affected by
the conscious desire of the Central Leadership to ensure receipt of the
revenue being generated at the street level by the BK sets. Reminiscent
of the fervor exhibited by movie icon Gordon Gecko, the yuppie
protagonist of Wall Street who justified corporate restructuring with
the mantra "greed is good," the Central Leadership demanded that all
BKs yield to them a share of drug revenue. Out of this desire to recoup
crack-based profits, they effectively instituted a franchise model, organ-
izing the Black Kings drug trafficking network in the manner of a fast-
food establishment, where each set ("franchise") could control their
own pace of sales and their wages, but each had to compete with other
BK sets in a highly bounded economic sphere. Each set is equal by
decree and entitled to the full benefits of membership in BK Nation -
e.g., they can call on other sets for protection and leaders' rhetoric
directs individuals to treat members of other sets as they would their own
"family." However, with more sets actively involved in the drug trade,
each neighborhood-based faction vied with others in BK Nation through
their respective financial portfolios. The competition was not trivial.
Leaders of financially successful sets have a greater chance for promo-
tion to the Central Leadership board; they are entitled to the "best
product" (i.e., the highest quality cocaine); and, if supplies of "product"
are scarce, their needs will be prioritized over lesser performing sets.
The franchiser, which is the Central Leadership, receives a monthly
payment (i.e., the "tribute") and can call upon BK gang sets to assist
other sets that may be engaged in war with the Black Kings' many rivals.
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446
monetary fines and, they often punish local leaders who attempt to
break free from the BKs or switch their allegiance to a rival nation. In
our study, those sets who proclaimed independence have been severely
punished - some members have been killed - and those who appro-
priate another gang's "colors" have typically been subject to shootings
and continuous harassment. Moreover, since each set must buy goods
from a supplier who is sanctioned by the BK Central Leadership, local
set leaders are limited in their ability to be compensated for any
relative status disparities. In this manner, a strong element of central-
ized planning had been retained in the overarching BK restructuring
into a corporate mode.
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447
gang affiliation and their drive to earn income in ways that resonated
with representations of work in the mainstream corporate firm. Many
approached involvement as an institutionalized path of socioeconomic
mobility for down-and-out youth, not simply as a refuge from the
available low-paying work in the mainstream but as an avenue in
which to craft one's identity and realize dominant values based in
consumption, monetary accumulation, and individuality. As many
members from the older generation are quick to point out, the ideals
of commitment, loyalty, and the principle of fictive-kinship that de-
fined member-member relationships had seemingly given way to the
notion that one's "brother" was also a competitor who stood in the
way of material gain and promotion to a leadership position. Gang
involvement had become subsumed under the trope of a career.
"It's about doing something for me and my family, taking care of them."
"I'm building me a future, you dig, I'm working my way up and gonna be
making big money."
The three quotes are testimonials of youth (18-24 years of age) who
were experimenting with the street trade (as opposed to mainstream
labor markets) in order to become self-determined providers.
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448
"I want to have me a car man, you know, have my shit on, live in a nice place
where all them people working downtown live, you know, you ain't got no
trash on the streets, everyone's driving the Lexuses and the Benzes. You think
they come back to this shit [he says pointing to the housing projects in which
he resides]. Fuck no, nigger! They ain't worried about getting no heat, no
food on their plate. I'm tired of hustling man, want the good life."
"You ever been to the suburbs man? It's boring as hell, but it's nice 'cause
they all working, they ain't worried about niggers shooting at night. It's like I
always tell you, you got to have a paycheck. You ain't made it man until you
get that fat check. [You mean you want to make a lot of money?] No, it ain't
about the money, 'cause I make more money than most of those niggers. It's
like, you got to have the bank account, you know, so you can get the house,
take care of the family, you know, all those things man. I can't get that shit
slanging [drugs] on the corner."
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449
The franchise model is also not far afield from the subjective percep-
tions of BK set leaders who were in power after the late 1980s. As
Kenny, one of these newer and younger leaders, stated,
"It's all a business now, you dig. Now, it's just about making money. You
know, if you don't make your [payment to the Central Leadership], you're
going to pay for it. If your shorties [foot-soldiers] ain't selling, it's a violation
and they're going to get beat. You could be all together and shit, but if you
ain't making money, you get no respect and they find someone else to come
in and [take your position]."
The feeling among local gang leaders that one is partly a franchise owner
is conditioned by a micro-managing Central Leadership that, by the late
1990s, was exerting considerable pressure on local sets to develop proto-
cols for ensuring that economically productive members are easily iden-
tified and rewarded. The Central Leadership also promotes competition
among gang sets, hoping that neighboring factions will continually try
to outpace one other in terms of sales revenue. The competition has
also manifested in recognized status differentials among sets in the
eyes of the Central Leadership; certain sets receive the first allocation
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450
The shift into a corporatist mode was not a seamless process for the
Black Kings - or the other supergang families. Particularly for the
local set leaders who must coordinate the actions of several hundred
members with divergent interests and relationships to the gang, the
new orientation posed considerable difficulties. For example, neighbor-
hood leaders receive conflicting and sometimes contradictory mandates
from their superiors. At the end of the 1980s, many local leaders could
recall an era where the BK Central Leadership did not intervene actively
in the affairs of each set. They resented the new relationship in which the
regional leaders assiduously monitored their affairs and revoked some
of their autonomy.
Especially for the older set leaders (late twenties and older), the gang's
shift from political activities and redistributive equity to "making
money" is stated as a lament. Socialized into the BKs through prison
tenure when the residues of black nationalism inflected gang mobiliza-
tion, they decry the absence of a patently political race-based agenda
among most of the city's gang members - in their Nation and others.
As one thirty-three year old member said in 1991, "We ain't helping
niggers no more, ain't helping black folk. It's fucked up [that] you in a
gang and you just in it for yourself, just for the money. You ain't doing
shit for your people." These senior members express frustration over
the inability to exit the gang by locating well-paying "legit jobs" and
many refuse to see drug trafficking as other than a temporary solution.
They decry the fact that "gangs" became "businesses" and that BKs
competed among themselves in the drug market. As Carl Tee, a forty-
three year old ex-BK set leader, explains, some refused to partake of
the new corporate ideology and withdrew from the gang entirely.27
"You just started thinking of the shit more like a business. It's like we had to
sell this much, you know, what do they call it, quotas for each month. They
wanted to make it a violation [punishable offense] if we wasn't into selling
and shit. It was crazy man, that's when I got out, 'cause if I wanted to make
money, shit I would have worked for some white boys downtown, you know?
So, that's when I started my plumbing business."
For Carl, the pressures to earn revenue compromised the use of the
gang for social and political support. For other such senior members,
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451
"We all just tired of [dealing dope]. It's like you just don't know if you gonna
be shot tomorrow. You could be in jail, shit they could kill your family. Who
wants that shit? My family don't need it. When you're young, you just think
about all the money you're going to make. Man, I see it in their eyes, these
younger cats think they're going to be rich. But, it ain't like that. Only a few
people making it like that, you dig? I got to get out, but the money helps,
man, helps my family survive. It's about survival around here."
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452
"Look man, you see it happening in business everyday. Why you think we any
different? If you can't bring in [the money], you ain't no good to us.... You
see, you can't be doing all the other things - basketball tournaments, helping
out families and shit - if you can't sell your shit. Money man, if you ain't
bringing the money, how are you good for what we trying to accomplish?
Who do you think is giving this [basketball tournament for children]? Costs
money, nigger, for all this.... If you can't show us you can lead an organiza-
tion, you can't bring in people. You gonna have to leave, we'll find someone
who can get niggers to join us, and there's a lot of niggers out there."
In this manner, the capabilities of the set leader are evaluated both by
his willingness to realize the collectivist ideologies of the gang - e.g.,
ensuring that rank-and-file memorize and follow by-laws - as well as
by his ability to increase the set's monthly drug revenue.
Some Black Kings leaders have chosen to monitor closely their set's
financial activities as a response to the perceived ambiguity in the
criteria used to evaluate their progress. In fact, there are several Black
Kings sets that are recognized as overly "business-like." These are sets
that, to varying degrees of diligence, maintain tallies of individual sales
performance, incidents of fighting, and numbers of arrest, injury, and
death to members.28 Among the city's BK membership, there is wide-
spread acknowledgment that leaders who institute such self-surveillance
are healthy competitors but, in accordance with the family-versus-busi-
ness tension, many are quick to attribute less lauded motives. The most
critical members argue that the leaders who maintain records are self-
serving, concerned with showing off their acumen to higher-ranking
leaders in hopes of securing a promotion and ignoring "familial"
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453
"A few of us that went to college. We ain't dumb niggers so, you know, we just
use what we know. We gotta be careful 'cause [our superiors] always want to
get more [money] from us. Shit, they find all sorts of excuses to whup our ass.
Or, shit, they even kick us out, put someone else in 'cause we ain't making
enough money. So, you know, I got it all down and they can see it, you know,
they can't say I ain't been making nothing, 'cause it's all down on paper, man,
right here."
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454
of the gang's total revenue). The set also pays money to the families
of members who are killed (approximately $5,000). Other significant
expenses include the payment to subcontractors ("warriors") who
assist the gang during "wars." They are typically ex-gang members
with tenuous labor force participation and reputations for bravery and
skill in the use of firearms.
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455
The essay has examined the rise of a corporatist ethos among several
large Chicago street gang families, one in which the orientation of the
gang toward commercial activity is defined by proto-business princi-
ples. These included a vertical-hierarchical administration, the infusion
of rational management procedures (although not to the exclusion of
charismatic authority), and rules tied to office as opposed to person. It
would be naive to equate the illicit entrepreneurialism of marginal
urban youth with that of state-sanctioned commerce. The gang, after-
all, is a socially illegitimate actor that must enforce its own contracts
and that cannot enter formal circuits of capital and property. In writing
the historical development of the Black Kings gang, our point has not
been to suggest that categories applied to the mainstream firm should
now be transposed uncritically onto the gang. That modern street gang
factions have adopted a corporate guise is significant from our per-
spective because of the chronology of its occurrence and the ways in
which the new orientation shaped the experience of gang involvement
for members, for the surrounding community, and for the society at
large. Our aim has been to steer the study of the urban poor away from
a "ghetto-specific" focus on internal properties of inner-cities, that
presumably generate surface phenomenal forms, to a study of the
social relations among the poor and larger social-institutional spaces.
Specifically, we have written the contours of change and continuity in
Chicago's gangland as a set of movements rooted in the transformation
of American society en toto, not just the lives of gang members or their
communities of residence.
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456
toward local social organization. In fact, since the postwar era, one
may say that representations of the urban poor have privileged the
differences and cultural peculiarities of this populace over similarities
and relations.34 The struggle to realize dominant ideologies - indeed,
politics and consciousness in general - have been given far less priority
and the hegemonic understanding of social action has turned into a
social physics in which the poor "adapt" in mechanistic fashion to
structural constraints. Following this analytic path, everyday life can
easily become subsumed under the tropes of "social disorganization"
and "dysfunctionality," both of which emphasize the inability of the
ghetto poor to act normatively, rather than the struggle to live accord-
ing to the ideals of the wider world and the ways in which identity and
action reflect and inflect these labors.35
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457
Certainly, this essay affirms the argument of scholars who have argued
that the move of large urban street gangs into underground economies
is shaped by the lack of opportunities in other economic spheres.
However, by itself, this view is insufficient to explain the timing of the
gang's turn to entrepreneurial activity (in the 1980s), the reasons for its
surface appearance as corporate - as opposed to an oligopoly, for
example - and the dominance of the gang in the crack trade in some
cities, not others. Explaining the occurrence requires an account that
integrates movements such as internal leadership struggles and the role
of various "collectivist ideologies" in determining the gang's ability
to organize social activity, as well as endogenous changes already
mentioned.
The bridge from the "peripheral" street gang to the "core" of modern
America must also be historical, rooted in the nexus of two historical
dynamics, that of the local system and the wider world. This essay has
examined the "dialectic of articulation" at two levels, that of the mem-
bers' consciousness of their activities and the organization's attempt to
cultivate cohesion. On the one hand, gang members may be alienated
from several mainstream institutions, but they share with other citizens
a continuous engagement with dominant representations of economic
behavior. Their understanding of homo economicus is formed through
exposure to popular discourse and media advertisements, through their
experiences working in central city offices and, through participation
in conspicuous consumption practices. Many leaders also see the process
of "giving back to the community" as part of the corporatist ethos and
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458
If such interplay between the gang and the wider world may be demon-
strated, it is not altogether fanciful to suggest the ghetto may be a
perspective from which to view the changes in the larger society. As
anthropologist Richard Fox wrote, once scholars locate heterogeneity
within the ghetto, they rest content to form an anthropology of the
excluded population "rather than use it as an insight into the nature of
industrial cities in their societies" (1977: 143). Following Fox's obser-
vation, this study of the street gang should not only direct our attention
to the diversity, contingency, and complexity of social life within the
ghetto, but it should be as firm a foundation as any other on which to
write an anthropology of America.
Acknowledgments
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459
Notes
9. Names and locating information (streets, city) have been changed to ensure ano-
nymity in accordance with human subjects requirements that regulate this research
project.
10. Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
11. Malcolm Klein writes that the corporate gang predates crack (American Street
Gang, 134).
12. Hagedorn, People and Folks; Jankowski, Islands in the Street; Philippe Bourgois,
In Search of Respect: Crack-Dealing in El Barrio (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1996); Felix Padilla, The Gang as an American Enterprise (New Bruns-
wick: Rutgers Univerity Press, 1992). Jeffrey Fagan, "Gangs, Drugs, and Neighbor-
hood Change," 39-74, in Gangs in America, C. Ronald Huff, editor (Newbury
Park: Sage, 2nd edition, 1996).
13. "Changes in the structure of the economy may have been largely responsible for the
entry of gang members, as individuals and cliques, into drug trafficking. Changing
labor market conditions in the 1960s and 1970s, especially the decrease of low-
skilled manufacturing jobs, made it difficult for older gang youth to find legitimate
employment and leave the teenage gang. Economic survival and the illegal drug
economy created pressures to develop the youth gang as an economic base of
opportunities as well as social status" (Spergel, Youth Gang Problem, 45).
14. Padilla, The Gang as an American Enterprise.
15. Jerome G. Miller, Search and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal
Justice System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), see 76-78.
16. See Padilla, The Gang, for a discussion of shifting law enforcement strategies in
Illinois and Davis (Prisoners of the American Dream) for an engaging discussion of
the growing "social conservatism" among the American electorate in the 1980s.
17. Clarence Lusane, Pipe Dreams: Racism and the War on Drugs (Boston: South End
Press, 1991).
18. Miller, Search and Destroy. Katherine Federle and Meda Chesney-Lind, "Special
Issues in Juvenile Justice: Gender, Race and Ethnicity," in Juvenile Justice and
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460
Public Policy. Toward a National Agenda, Ira Schwartz, ed. (New York: Lexington,
1992).
19. James Jacobs, Stateville (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978).
20. Michael J. Olivero, Honor, Violence and Upward Mobility. A Case Study of Chicago
Gangs During the 1970s and 1980s (Edinburg: University of Texas, Pan American
Press, 1991).
21. Support for the thesis that extended incarceration might have played a facilitating
role in the gang's eventual ascension into the drug trade may be seen in the
relationship that the BK central leadership body formed with security personnel
within jails and prisons. As indicated, the instrumental ties between gang leaders
and prison leaders probably centered around the latter's need for compliance and
the prisoners' own aim to procure basic amenities, retain a semblance of personal
dignity and autonomy, and thereby construct a relatively hospitable environment.
For the BK leaders, an early use of the contacts with prison security agents was to
transport goods and communicate messages between their cells and the wider
world. News of family members, directives to gang members on the street, and
small allotments of narcotics could all pass through a prison guard and reach an
inmate; similarly, inmates could relay requests for goods or services to families via
these correspondents. Not surprisingly, the gang leader exercised some sway over
such circulation and the use of such liaison became a point of contention among
rival gangs. "I could get you whatever," said Jason Johnson, "but, you had to be [a]
BK.... It was the guards, you know, that we had to get on our side, because these
niggers could get anything for you, I mean anything. So, it was like, you just fought
to get them on your side, all the [gangs] were fighting over these cats." As BK
members involvement in drug trafficking increased around 1980, the guards be-
came both an avenue for the imprisoned BK leadership to transport illicit goods
into prison and, eventually, to issue orders to the street-based members. "Let's say
you needed to make sure you was getting your share [of the drug revenue]. You just
paid this [prison guard] fifty bucks to tell a [neighborhood gang leader] to give your
momma five hundred bucks each month.... See, lot of us, when we got out we had
cash. We came out and we just controlled shit because we never let these shorties get
away, you know, start doing things without us knowing." As this leader explains,
the use of guards could also help them to regulate the underground activity and
ensure that that imprisoned inmates (specifically, their families) could receive a
share of the revenue being generated.
22. Jankowiski, Islands in the Street.
23. See Bourgois, In Search of Respect, for the social organization of drug trafficking in
New York City.
24. They also had to ensure citywide leaders that younger members ("shorties") would
graduate from high school before engaging in violent activity or drug sales. Although
the secondary school rule remains in effect, as one elder leader, James, explains, it
is rarely enforced: "[Central Leadership] don't really make folks do all that political
stuff no more. When I was starting up, we was hanging with each other. You know,
I ain't saying we was angels or nothing, but if you was not in school, you got in
trouble. People don't know this, but we was buying each other food, you know
sharing and helping each other. We sold drugs, but a lot of us was political so we
was really careful you know, to make sure the folks who was coming after us didn't
forget about that, you know 'cause a lot today just see the money, it's only money
that counts."
25. Disciplining occurs through embodied practices that include corporal punishment,
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461
acclimating members to sales "shifts" and other temporal dissections of the work-
day, and teaching proper uses of consumption to "signify" (group identity, gang
membership, masculinity). The enforcer is also responsible for organizing the
gang's defenses against rival sets, typically those that lay claim to adjacent spaces
(some sets assign the latter set of duties to a "security officer").
26. Promotions in general may be the product of several factors including leadership
ability, capacity to earn revenue, and the ability to follow the gang's codes and
written by-laws. However, an individual may also win praise for bravado and
courage, whether during a formal "war" or a spontaneous altercation on the streets.
The corporate gang, then, operates somewhat like Albert Cohen's "subcultural"
gang of the mid-twentieth century, wherein members must simultaneously display
conformist behavior while signifying their rebellious temperament. We note, how-
ever, that the dialectic of rebelliousness and conformity is different for foot soldiers
than for the gang leader: the foot soldier is not assumed to be a disciplined body,
i.e., a fully-molded member who understands the appropriate moments for displays
of bravado; his exploits and outbursts will be tolerated much more so than those of
the leader. The leader must demonstrate to his superiors a form of controlled
rebelliousness: in battles, he must control his own emotions, while remaining a
source of energy, spirit, and motivation for the fighters he commands; he must be
willing to inflict physical punishment, sometimes through sustained violent beat-
ings, but not be so intolerant that members eschew involvement altogether; his set
will be judged by their fearlessness, their willingness to take over new territories
and to fight rivals, but also by their capacity to sustain a peaceful, "low-profile"
economic operation.
27. This is an interesting parallel to a contrast commonly given by non-gang affiliated
residents whereby "gang wars" are differentiated from (contemporary) "drug wars";
the basis of the former could include attempts to overtake territory, petty jealousies,
and recreational contests that "turned bad," whereas the latter conflicts center on
petty accumulation disputes such as price undercutting.
28. That organized criminal entities maintain some record of their activity is not novel.
Law enforcement routinely use the "books" of such entities in their indictments.
Typically, however, such records reflect the investment portfolio of the leaders
or relations of extortion with individuals and businesses. In recent federal trials
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462
ment through in-group promotion, they will search more actively for mainstream
employment and reduce their involvement in the gang.
33. Existing studies also suggest that drug trades expose individuals to greater levels of
violence, increasing their chance of injury and death - an observation that is also
supported by our ethnographic observation. In our sample, we recorded an annual
death rate among gang members to be 4.2 percent, more than 100 times the
national average for African-American males in this age group. For the gang set
whose financial records we analyze, each member has a 25 percent chance of dying
if he remains a member of the gang over a four-year period and if all members
stayed the same during that time. On average, a drug seller could expect 0.59
wounds (virtually all from bullets) and 1.43 arrests per year.
34. The ethnographies that established this trend are Ulf Hannerz, Soulside (New
York: Columbia University, 1969), and Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls (New
York: Aldine Press, 1971).
35. Loic J. D. Wacquant, "Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American
Ghetto," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (July 1997): 341-
353.
36. Joan W. Scott, "Experience," in Feminists Theorize the Political, Judith Butler and
Joan W. Scott, editors (London: Routledge, 1992), 26.
37. A noteworthy exception is Elijah Anderson, Streetwise (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
38. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1987), 87.
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